


A Hunted World

by Asrael_Valtiri



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Blindfolded Kylo Ren, Fatal Frame AU, Ghosts, Haunted Houses, Journalist Hux, Kylo Ren Looks Hot While Being Tortured, Kylo Ren is a Ghost, Kylo Ren: Prince of the Underworld, M/M, Minor Violence, Photography, Rituals, Tattooed Kylo Ren, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-21
Updated: 2019-10-31
Packaged: 2020-12-27 07:50:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 10,367
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21115292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Asrael_Valtiri/pseuds/Asrael_Valtiri
Summary: For Huxloween 2019. Prompts: Video Games, Asylum, Trapped, Rituals, Ghosts, Abandoned Places, Haunted House, Sentient Locations/Objects, Things That Go Bump in the Night.Freelance journalist Armitage Hux has been mourning the mysterious disappearance of his friend and coworker Phasma. Following her trail, Hux decides to complete Phasma's last assignment, an article on a local winery. That winery happens to be on the same land as a haunted asylum, a hospital, and a cemetery. After Hux spots an apparition of a tall, mysterious, tattooed man, events quickly take a paranormal turn as Hux begins to explore the asylum in his dreams.





	1. Those Cold, Dark Nights Inside Your Head

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Huxloween! Ben Solo is a ghost in this story, and while everything appears to be tragic (not to mention creepy!) Hux and Ben do end up together in the end!

In his dreams, he wields his camera as a weapon.

Ever since his friend Phasma disappeared on assignment. An assignment that should have been so simple--a write-up of a local winery for a wine afficionado’s magazine. She planned to take her own pictures and write up the story, and so he stayed on the East Coast to await her return.

Now, he looks through his camera, setting up a shot of the main building, the inn itself. Behind it is an old hospital, long derelict, windows boarded up, doors blocked off. There is also, father past the inn and field of grapevines, a smaller building that had been an orphanage in its previous life, an asylum in an even earlier one. Through the trees edging one side of the property, he glimpses crumbling headstones.

“So, Mr. Hux,” the man says in his neutral Midwestern accent, “you’re here to finish the story for your magazine?”

Hux smiles and adjust his camera bag against his side.

“Oh, I’m a freelancer, like Phasma was,” he replies.

The man frowns, pushes his wireframes up his nose.

“I was,” he says, “so sorry to hear of her disappearance. Nothing like that has happened here in--oh, ages.”

Hux frowns now. “Do people often disappear?”

“No, no. But this place is known to be haunted. We’ve been on TV. That’s why I’ve left all the buildings alone.”

“Ah.”

Hu tries not to feel like a big city person judging more provincial ways, doubting the intelligence of small town people; but, really, ghosts were too much.

Although, knowing Phasma, ghosts made more sense than someone actually managing to accost her.

Still, he would finish this job for her and look for any clue he could find. She was his nearest and dearest, and the thought of anything happening to her killed him. Poe asked why they didn’t just get married, they were so tight.

Hux didn’t bother telling him the reason was because he preferred sausages to tacos, although that would probably be the best way to tell him. Poe and his two partners--in life and occupation--were more into immersive journalism. One might even say gonzo. Honestly, if this story had led to Phasma’s disappearance, maybe he should have sent it along to Poe.

The night after she’d vanished, Hux had dreamt the strangest thing. He woke in a cold sweat and felt as though the dream had followed him through the corridors of slumber to the waking world. He had sat up and turned on his light, and after-images of grasping hands had faded after a moment.

He couldn’t recall much. Just a few things.

In his dream:

He followed Phasma through an overgrown field into a dilapidated old building, through the darkened halls. Occasionally, she had backtracked to another door, another staircase, as she searched farther and farther into the darkness, until she began to wander down a spiral staircase into blackness. Where he couldn’t see her. Where she couldn’t hear him call out for her.

Again in his dream the next night:

He followed her out into the cemetery. She stood before a fire-blackened mausoleum. Its door opened, and needle-fingered hands reached for her. She screamed his name as they pulled her into the darkness. After, though he seemed only to observe the events, he felt a presence coming for him in the dream, and he force quit it.

On and on these dreams haunt his nights. His eyes have pockets of dark under them, and his body weighs him down in its exhaustion.

It has only been a week.

And now, here he is, following her footsteps.

“So, the outbuildings are off limits to visitors, then?” he asks suddenly.

“Oh, yes. These grounds have a storied history, between the hospital, the asylum, and then the later orphanage. Some of the ghosts are totally benign. But we have a few who--aren’t.”

“Has anyone really gone missing here?”

“Uh, is this part of the article?”

“No! No, sorry. Just curious.” Hux smiles.

The owner looks nervous as he replies, “There are tales, but I don’t know much as to their veracity.”

Hux nods and deftly changes the subject. He records the brief tour of the grounds, takes pictures whilst he still has daylight. He interviews Mr. San Tekka before dinner, properly, and settles into his room after dinner.

So far so good on the magazine’s tab. His dinner was a far richer affair than that to which he was accustomed--locally raised beef, some fancy cut he barely knew, heavy and all-American. It was very tasty, he thought, and fine for a lark. And he had copious amounts of wine, their own, and it was surprisingly good. They paired his steak with a Norton, and he licked the final drops from his lips happily, stuffed past comfort and a mite tipsy.

Now, returned to his room armed with a glass of water, he goes through his notes, types out the interview on his laptop, and, only then, puts on his pajamas. In early October, it has finally started to truly become fall; the chill has nipped at his skin all day, so he happily puts on his pink fuzzy socks and gets ready for bed.

Fetching his laptop, he curls up on his king-sized bed, pulls the blankets over his lap, and looks at the pictures he’d downloaded onto his computer from his shoot today. He can feel the heat from his MacBook on his thighs.

Here, a picture of the vineyard; a wide shot of the inn itself; panorama of the inn and outbuildings; the proprietor. Some interior shots of the restaurant and inn. And then one closeup of the front exterior of the orphanage, once an asylum.

He pauses. He knows he was trying to find something, some telltale sign of Phasma. A shoe or a scrap of clothing. Anything, really.

As his eyes sweep over his photo, they grow wide. He rubs them and stares harder, daring the photo to admit it has pranked him. Hux wipes his fingers over the screen.

No, still there.

In the first floor window to the right of the door, a face stares out at him. Which, of course, makes no sense, because the window is boarded up.

He looks again.

Blond hair and delicate features.

Phasma is in the window.

Hux yelps and shoves the computer off his lap, luckily onto the bed itself. He clambers from the bed and rushes to his camera, cycles through the photos.

Nothing. The window is still boarded up.

He runs back to his laptop. 

Nothing.

He must be going mad. 

He is grieving. He is ragged from sleeping poorly and being plagued by bad dreams. He just needs sleep.

He pops three Benadryl and curls up tightly, pulling the duvet over his ears. He only feels he’s being watched because of his own exhaustion and this assignment.


	2. One Small Thread Keeps You Hostage

Again the dreams come for him.

In his bed, his body twitches and whimpers, huddled tight under his duvet. In the dream, this time, he isn’t following Phasma. He stands outside the asylum, the dream wind ruffling his loose hair. He wears the clothes in which he’d dressed that very day--button-down, blazer, slim-cut black slacks. He wears his camera on his shoulder.

He hesitates and regards the building, as if sizing up an enemy. He has the distinct impression that is indeed what he is doing. He feels only the cold, nothing else. Not the ground under his feet, not even his own body. This disconcerts him greatly. It makes him feel unreal, as if he is simply going to fade away. The transience this imposes upon him upsets him.

He stands straighter, to ground himself, to present his existence to this building before him, as if the building has the power to declare his very existence redundant.

He scoffs.

These existential fears seem too real to be a dream to him, but he shrugs them off.

“All right, show me what you’ve got.” 

He feels foolish issuing this challenge to the unknown. He takes a deep breath and strides into the building through its large double doors.

Everything appears in muted shades of grey and blue. The foyer spreads around him, crumbling and rotted. He smells it in the air. In this dream, it feels more real than he does. He steps over a collapsed pillar--in the Corinthian style, his mind supplies, trying to underpin his existence in reality--and heads further into the asylum.

A long hall reaches before him, heading perhaps towards offices and classrooms. Upstairs -- risers barely usable--are surely the dorms for the children, or what had surely been the patients’ wards. What a miserable place to have lived a hundred, even fifty years ago, he thinks.

Two hallways stretch right and left, east and west wings.

Hux takes a deep breath and heads forward. First floor first, he decides.

For an interminable time, nothing happens. He thinks perhaps this time, his dream truly is just a dream. Which meant, what--the others weren’t? he asks himself.

He moves through a large office, a mess hall, a once well-appointed industrial kitchen. Past these, he finds an overgrown greenhouse. He hasn’t seen this earlier today. He tries the door.

Locked.

For some reason, he breaks a pane in the door and reaches through.

Just as he touches the latch on the other side, something yanks at his arm. His wrist scratches against the broken glass, and he pulls his hand back through.

He licks the blood off.

“The hell--”

He bends down to stare through the remnants of the pane. He sees nothing but a horde of overgrown plant life.

He raises his camera to the hole and examines the screen as he moves the lens carefully into the hole he created. He feels something touch the lens and pull down. He sees nothing on the screen. Without thinking, he jams his finger on the shutter button. The flash flares on the other side of the glass, and he hears something scream. Then it yanks on his lens harder.

With a yell, he takes three more shots. Something screams, and its shriek fades into nothingness.

Gasping, Hux clutches his camera to his chest and, slowly, apprehensively, lowers it to see what he’s photographed.

Something with a warped body, apparently female, long dark hair cascading in unkempt waves down past her shoulders. She wore some sort of dress and a filthy blindfold over her eyes. her fingers were arthritic claws over her mouth gaped in a scream.

“Oh god, oh god, oh god,’ Hux whimpers.

He runs back down the hall. 

Dawn light greets him when he opens his eyes.

He doesn’t know if he’s in the real world or the dream for a moment. But then his alarm goes off, and he finds himself in the bed at the inn.

He sits up slowly, breath coming in gasps. He runs a hand over his face.

And notices a long scratch on his wrist.

**

At breakfast, a small woman with dark hair approaches him. She smiles and holds out her hand. Hux stands and takes it.

“Leia,” she says. “Sorry we didn’t get to meet yesterday.”

“No worries,” Hux replies with an easy smile. “Your husband showed me around.”

“Oh, oh, no,” Leia replies with a laugh. “He’s the caretaker. My husband--well, he doesn’t care for this old place.”

“Oh, I apologize--”

Leia waves her hand in dismissal.

“I can’t let the old place go,” she sighs. “Lor takes care of it for me.”

Hux nods.

“So,” he begins carefully, “Lor, was it? He said no one has disappeared to his knowledge before until now.”

“Ah, the young woman doing the write-up on us.” Leia sags and pulls out a chair to sit with Hux. He resumes sitting.

“Yes, she was a good friend,” he replies.

“Oh, god, I’m so sorry. I honestly didn’t think that would ever happen again.”

“So it has happened before?”

“Lor doesn’t know about it. He only believes this old place is haunted, and he acts accordingly. No one else has gone missing since--” She pauses. Her brows draw together, and her eyes refocus over Hux’s shoulder. He turns to see what she sees.

There is nothing.

His eyes slide back to her.

“Since our son,” she whispers, “over a decade ago.”

“Your son?” 

She nods. “He’d been having trouble. He was angry. He always had trouble with people. He and my brother fought one night. He stormed out and never returned. All we found was his hoodie the next day in the cemetery. And footprints in the mud leading to a mausoleum.”

Hux’s blood goes cold.

“A mausoleum.”

“They are all shut up tight, have been for years. Longer than we’ve been here. We’d had no trouble before that and precious little since. But, you know, there are stories. Decades worth.”

“Lor said ghost hunters have been here?”

“Yes. They always find activity, but none of the less friendly ghosts ever push their luck. A few scratches, some noises, broken equipment once or twice. But they don’t usually have enough strength to do much.”

Hux has always been a skeptic, mostly because he has no time to worry about the unfortunate dead; not when the living are so persistent in their needs and cruelty. He is certain he’s had a strange occurrence or two, but nothing that impacted his worldview. He supposes he was less skeptic and more impatient with the nonsense of both the living and the dead. As long is it doesn’t affect him, he can do as he likes, live how he sees fit.

Now though…

He holds out his scabbed wrist.

Leia takes it in her small hands.

“What’s this?”

“I had a dream last night. In it, something scratched me.”

“Could you have done this yourself?”

He shrugs, holds up his nicely trimmed nails. “Possibly. Except I’ve been dreaming about this place since Phasma disappeared. Before I even saw it. And my dreams have been uncannily accurate. I dreamed Phasma disappeared into a mausoleum.”

Leia’s eyes widen.

“Naturally, I’d say it was all coincidence. but this place is far from normal. I can feel it in my bones.”

Leia nods.

“Sometimes, I think I see Ben,” she says.

They sit in silence for awhile.

“Perhaps,” she says at last, “you’d best go.”

“Let me stay another night,” Hux says.

She regards him carefully.

“Fine. But don’t you disappear too.”

  
  
**

He explores the grounds all that day. He makes his way through the asylum. At one point, he thinks he hears footsteps treading on broken glass in the hall behind him. No one is there. Had they been, he’d have seen them; there was nowhere in the hallway to hide. He wanders around in the morgue. He finds an old hospital gown on the filthy tiles. He refuses to touch it. The air is so thick, he can hardly breathe, and his hair stands on end, though no breeze stirs the dust here. He takes a few pictures and leaves as quickly as he can when he hears something--nothing--in front of him screech.

He examines the cemetery. Most of the tombstones are so old he can’t read their epitaphs. Nothing quite so old as New England, but old for here. There are only a handful of mausoleums, but he recognizes instantly the one from his dream.

He takes many pictures from different angles. He hopes someone, anyone, will show up in the pictures again, like Phasma did in the asylum window.

“Come on, Phasma, show me where you are,” he demands.

Nothing else happens.

At dusk, he grows cold and strangely alarmed. A strong wind sweeps through the rows of headstones, as if the weather itself is attempting to shove him away from the graveyard. He takes the proffered advice and rushes away from the mausoleum.

He eats dinner and drinks enough wine to render him sleepy. Then he returns to his room to examine his photos.


	3. In the End of the Night I Can Feel You Breathe

In his bed, Hux drinks the complimentary tea in his room, a gentle chamomile. As he looked through the little sachets of tea in the box on the dresser, he was filled with sorrow when he saw his destined tea: Phasma’s favorite relaxation tea; she’d always crassly called it “camel toe.” He chuckles to himself as he inhales its floral warmth, and sighs.

He uploads his photos onto his Mac and examines each one carefully. There isn’t much from the grounds outside, but the photos from the morgue are far more revealing. The hairs on the back of his neck prickle as his eyes refuse to move from the images.

He recalls one of them very well. He heard a scream when he shot the photo. Now, he stares at a figure trying to shield itself from his lens. It is a figure in a dark cloak. He can’t see the face, and the shape is only vague. All he can really tell is that it looks humanoid, save for the fact that its hands are long, too thin, with sharp claws at the fingertips. He shivers in his pajamas.

In some of the hallways, small figures show up. Children, he thinks, garbed in more robes, but in lighter colors. One small figure isn’t particularly childlike. It takes Hux a moment to distinguish its shape. When he realizes that, alone in the hallway, it is a crawling woman with a screaming mouth gazing at him, he gasps and jumps. And for one moment, she seems to shimmer and move to reach for him.

He gets out of the program and turns off his computer.

“No more of that,” he whispers to himself.

He finishes his tea and prepares for bed. He has every intention of simply going to sleep, since he’s quite tired. But he desperately wants to check out the other photos.

He peeks across the room almost coyly at his laptop. He considers it a moment.

It seems to call to him.

So he can’t resist. So he is perhaps being ridiculous over all of this nonsense. But something happened to his best friend, his only friend really. He takes his laptop to the desk and turns it on. He won’t desecrate the silent place of his own slumber this time. He feels better keeping his bed safe from the dark visions in his photos. As if he could maintain its sanctity. 

He goes through the pictures methodically. He sees more robed specters. Some with long needled talons for fingers. Some children alone or in groups of seemingly significant numbers, almost as if they were part of some ritual. One child is turned toward him with a knowing smile.

He skips quickly to the next photo.

Icy tendrils nip up his spine. He hunches in the chair.

The next photo elicits a sharp gasp. In this one, the child has moved from her companions and reaches toward the camera.

Toward Hux himself.

The next photo she is closer. Her robe is white with red detailing. her hair is done up in ornate braids around her head. Her eyes gleam hungrily.

“No,” Hux commands.

In the next photo, she looks back over her shoulder. In the next, she blows him a kiss, and he gasps again. In the final one, she has faded into the distance behind another person.

Someone tall and broad and male.

His wrists are bound with rope, and the children lead him down a corridor decorated with lit gothic sconces and strange sigils. The man--it’s definitely male, Hux thinks--curls forward into himself.

Hux is confused. The photos are too dark for this level of detail, but he can see everything, almost hear them.

He gulps and closes his laptop again. 

He knows when he sleeps, he will see all of this again. It frightens him.

**

And so he does. And so it should.

Hux walks the halls in his sleep, searching for the man. He has his camera, as always. He wants to help the man, to see his face. He dearly wants to see his face. Hux thinks all of this could be the key to finding Phasma.

He eventually finds the hall. In his dream, the sconces glow with blue fire. He sees the evidence of footsteps in the thick dust on the floor. Many sets of small footprints surrounding much larger ones. Larger than his own, even. This man was big.

He wonders vaguely if this could be Ben, Leia’s son. He doesn’t know why he thinks it. He assumes Ben is grown, because Leia is easily in her fifties. Though how someone so big sprang from her is a mystery to Hux.

He follows the trail until he comes to a wide circular chamber. In the middle of it is a massive round altar made of marble. There are, at each corner, long poles rising from the ground, with ropes wrapped around them. Above the altar is another pole with rope dangling from it.

He doesn’t know how it works, but he knows instinctively it’s bad.

He hears a sound above his head.

In the darkness above, he glimpses pale hands reaching for him. A low chanting begins.

_ “Sleep, sacrifice, lie in peace _

_ Sleep, sacrifice, lie in peace _

_ If you cry, the boat you’ll ride _

_ The last trip to the other side _

_ Once you get there, sacred marks _

_ you’ll bear _

_ They shall be peeled off if you fail _

_ to lie still.” _

“Oh, fuck, fuck,” Hux yelps.

Something clutches at his blazer, and he pulls away. A low wail rises in the chamber, and from above, the hands are revealed to be attached to a bare, tattooed arm. And then the rest of the body appears, large and well-muscled, clad only in a loincloth. His body is also tattooed, to match the sigils, Hux notes; the few unmarked areas of skin are pale and freckled, scattered with moles. Dark doe eyes capture Hux’s own in a tragic stare. Hux opens his mouth to speak, but the figure screams as his body is lowered atop the altar. His eyes blacken with malevolent intent as he is captured with the ropes and stretched upon what Hux now knows to be a rack. A child appears and, touching hands to a lever, lowers the rope overhead. Another child comes to put it around the man’s neck.

Small hands grasp at the levers connected to the poles at the four quarters of the altar, each set of hands coalescing into a small phantom. The one at the man’s left foot appears first, and Hux knows her face instantly. And she smiles beatifically at him before she yanks on the lever, and the man screams as his leg is pulled. She seems to giggle before the children all begin to chant their song once more. Hux seems spellbound.

All the ropes pull taut, and the man cries out in agony. His body writhes, stretches, his back arching almost sensually. His buttocks flex, and his stomach muscles tighten as he tries in vain to wrench himself free. Frantically, the man flails against his bonds. He fights valiantly, his body perspiring, shimmering in the blue light of the wall sconces. The children pull more tightly on his bonds, and he screams out for his mother.

At the sound of his voice, Hux is suddenly aware of the quasi-reality of the situation.

“Ben!” Hux cries out.

The darkened eyes find Hux again. The man whimpers, but then his face becomes a rictus of pain, transforms into something bestial as Ben screams out obscenities and curses at Hux.

The children cease their torturous ministrations and seem to see Hux for the first time, save for the first child. She’s had her eyes on him this entire time, gleefully watching his reaction to Ben’s torment.

“Welcome,” she says, and Hux is mortified as he recognizes those eyes, the braids, the smirk. “You wish to join in our ritual? Become our sacrifice? Perhaps you would be more worthy than the one we have now.”

“Ben--” Hux whispers.

“No, sir! Silly man. This is an echo of what has happened, a prelude to what will come. Perhaps you envy the woman her privilege?”

Hux’s eyes pop.

“Phasma--” he says. And then yells it.

Faintly, he hears, “Hux?”

“Oh god, oh god, where is she?” he yells.

The child is unimpressed. “No, you shall not see her.”

Hux grabs his camera, and she shrinks back. he shoots, and she squeals unhappily. He takes picture after picture, and the children circle him and reach for him. They pull at his clothes, float above him and yank his hair. And still he shoots, growling and yelling.

He finds himself facing the altar, nearly sprawling on Ben. He looks into Ben’s blackened irises and snaps his picture.

Ben shrieks a curse. Hux does it again.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he says. “I’ve got to save her. I’ll come back for you.”

Ben’s eyes clear. The two men gaze at each other as the children scratch and bite at Hux.

“Promise me,” Ben whimpers.

“I swear it, Ben.”

He snaps another picture of Ben, and, screaming, Ben disappears.

The children follow with a wail.

All that remains is an oily, blackish slick on the altar.

Across the room, a door opens, as if by magic.

Vile magic, Hux thinks.

He runs through it and into a long, narrow room.

In a cage built low all along the far wall, Phasma is hunched. she is in white robes, he short hair braided as best it can be, and all her visible skin is tattooed.

Like Ben’s.

She looks at him in disbelief. 

“Hux?”


	4. One Small Thread Keeps You Hostage

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a dark story with a soft ending, so please mind the tags. Additional content warnings in the end notes.

“Hux?”

Phasma’s voice is hoarse, as if she hasn’t used it in days, or she’s been screaming. Or both.

He throws himself down before the door to her cell. There is, of course, no way to release her, not yet, but they clasp each other’s hands through the bars of her prison.

“How are you here? Am I dreaming?” she asks, her voice breaking with a sob.

“No,” Hux replies with a kiss to her knuckles, “no, dearest. I’m dreaming. But this dream is fucked up and real. You really vanished. I’ve been dreaming this place for the past week.”

“How are you here?”

“I’ve no clue. The dreams started right after you went missing, when I was in New York. But this is all more than dream--”

“How do we get out of here?”

“I’ve been waking up. You, I don’t know. Do you wake up? Where’s your body?”

More tears came as she replied. “I don’t know. I’m always here, Armitage. I don’t wake up.”

His brows rise. 

“Does that mean I’m dead?” she whispered.

“I don’t know,” he replied. It was truth. She might very well be dead, but it hurts too much to admit that. “You might be just trapped.”

She leans her head against the wooden bars of her cell. Her shoulders shake, and this sight nearly kills him. She’s always been naturally stronger than he has, powerful, confident, flippant, where he’s always been pretense and self defense and efficient aloofness. But they’ve always been there for each other. She’s the only soul he actually considers his friend, despite Poe and his partners’ overtures.

What will he do, if he cannot save her?

“Can you get me out of here?” she asks.

“If I can find a key, I can,” he says dolefully.

Something the little shit priestess says comes back to him.

“I might have a key. A possibility,” he says.

“Hurry, please. I don’t know how much time I have left. They branded me and drew all these strange marks on me. I don’t know what else will happen, but they’re purifying me soon. Whatever that means.”

“Fuck. Then I have to leave. I need to find the key.”

“Don’t leave me, Hux, please. I’m going to die, if I haven’t already! They take me to the pool outside for purification,” she says and waves her hand at the barred window behind her. He doesn’t recall any body of water on the property now. But perhaps, long ago, there had been, and it’s grown over. “They take me tomorrow. Or whatever that means here. I don’t know. And there’s another creature. He has tattoos all over, and he’s blindfolded and terrible. He caught me and gave me to them.”

How many sacrifices have there been? Hux wonders.

He clasps her hand.

“I’ll do everything I can. I’m getting you out of here, Phasma,” he tells her. His demeanor is one of grim determination. “But I have to leave to figure out how.”

She sets her jaw and nods. She is, perhaps, the only person on the planet who can still appear tough with tears in her eyes. He clutches her hand to his lips one more time.

“I’m getting you out of here,” he promises.

She nods and releases him.

He flees back the way he came, tears stinging his own eyes. As he passes the altar, he averts his eyes and runs through the room, his camera bouncing haphazardly against his side.

And suddenly all around him, he hears chanting. No, no, no, he begs to the ether. Futilely here, he knows. A hand clutches at his blazer, and he wheels around, brandishing his camera. Desperately, he hits the shutter button, but all he hears is a whimper.

And then he is being hoisted into the air and slammed into a wall.

His breath flies from him, and he’s dazed. His eyes roll forward, and he yelps inelegantly. Were he less afraid, he’d be dismayed at how ridiculous he sounded. As his focus returns, he gasps.

Phasma was right.

There is a tattooed man. A blindfold tightly winds its way over his eyes and large nose, through his dark hair. The blue sigils are faded now, the body more pale. His torso is covered by something that looks vaguely like a filthy white sarong, slung low on his hips. Rope burns adorn his neck, wrists, and ankles like jewelry. His mouth hangs open, but his lush ruby lips give his face a sensual effect rather than a frightening one.

And Hux says, “Ben?”

The tattooed man pauses. He tilts his head and closes his lips just a little bit, making his plump bottom lip pout.

“My name is Hux. I’m trying to help you and my friend. Ben, are you all right?”

“He is not Ben,” a voice pipes up. Unfortunately, Hux recognizes the voice. He glowers at the little acolyte with the braids. “Our master calls him Kylo Ren. It is a name of power.” She sneers up at Hux from behind Ben.

“Your master?” Hux chokes out.

Ren’s grasp has lessened, but Hux is still rather uncomfortable pressed against a wall.

“Our master demands sacrifice. Our master is old, older than your god,” she declares.

“I’m an atheist,” Hux says blithely.

The girl frowns at him. She looks angry and has no retort.

“Kylo Ren, destroy him,” she orders.

“No, no, Ben, not yet!” he pleads.

**

And wakes up.

Very convenient, he thinks, but he won’t complain about whatever awakened him. It very likely saved his life.

And then he realizes he’s a trifle uncomfortable. As his awareness returns to his body, he realizes he’s gotten hard. How the hell that happened, he has no idea. Or, rather, he’s not sure how his immense fear couldn’t quell his arousal.

“Absurd, Armitage,” he scolds himself.

Apparently, watching beautiful men being tormented and then being slammed against the wall by one really did it for him.

He frowns. Ben’s torment shouldn’t turn him on. Ben shouldn’t. He, unlike Phasma, is very likely long dead. She could still be alive.

His erection flags. With an oddly relieved sigh, he stands from the bed.

And falls on his face on the floor as something grabs his ankle.

He turns on the floor. He can already feel his lip fattening from his faceplant. He manages to turn over, but something still clutches his ankle. His eyes widen as he sees a hand, abnormally long and pale, reaching from under the bed to accost him.

Another hand appears and strains as it pulls a body forward.

It is a girl, young, with braided hair. Ah, his nasty little friend has followed him.

This bodes ill, if they can follow him here.

Her foul breath huffs over him, paralyzes him. She smiles too wide, too toothily, and releases his ankle, but only to crawl up his body.

“Our master desires you. You have angered him,” she says in a strangely sepulchral voice for one who looks so young. It echoes in his head. “And yet, you are so very pretty. Perhaps he desires a matched set of lovely boys. He rarely gets men. Maybe he’ll let us play with you, pretty one.”

She giggles, and it is grotesque, the sounds, and how the action distorts her mouth and throat, bulging them like a frog’s.

Her hands are at his thighs now, her talons stroking up and up as she climbs him.

“You should never have come here. You might have escaped, lovely,” she murmurs and squeezes his thighs.

“What manner of master does this to children?” Hux snarls.

Her eyes are twin black pools as she gazes at him and lowers her face to his thigh. She bats her eyelashes slowly, coyly.

“We were in the orphanage so long ago, I am older than you by decades, pretty one,” she tells him. She lowers her gaze, eyeing his flagging erection. Licks her lips, and the fine golden hairs on his arms rise. She grabs his hips and pulls herself forward to inhale him. She smiles.

Whimpering, he flails and tries to shove her away, but she grabs his wrists in her hands with uncommon strength. Supernatural strength. He cannot break free as she lowers her face to his groin again and nuzzles his cock through his trousers. She hums low in her throat and opens her mouth to him, her abnormally long tongue glistening black in the low light.

He kicks his legs and tries to buck her off his body. She releases his hands and grabs at his hips to hold him still.

He writhes and twists, manages to pull out from under her grips just enough to reach for his camera on the nightstand. He feels her claws rake his back as he pulls it into his hands by its strap.

“No, I will take you. You will learn to like it!” she screeches.

He turns to her, brandishing his camera.

“I doubt your master would take kindly to you tampering with his sacrifices,” Hux snaps at her.

Her eyes widen in fear. She lowers herself against his body and hisses. She squeezes his cock painfully.

“Fuck!” he yelps and hits the shutter button.

The priestess reels back and screams. Her hands fly to her face; she peeks at him tentatively through her fingers.

“You told me I could trade myself for my friend,” Hux says.

“You are his anyway. There is nothing you can do. You both belong to him now.”

“We’ll see about that, you little shit.”

And he fires shot after shot until she disappears screaming.

**

He sleeps fitfully and awakens the next morning right before breakfast ends.

He rushes to the dining room just in time to order food and have hot tea sitting before the French doors that open to the patio.

The day is brisk and gray. It looks just like he feels. He is surprised he’d gotten a normal sleep after last night. Perhaps Phasma hadn’t called to him, or perhaps the master of the realm left him alone after he’d discovered Hux had been harassed by one of his priestesses. The thought makes the bile rise in his throat.

He eats his breakfast quietly and finishes just as Leia joins him.

“You look terrible,” she says.

“I feel terrible.”

“Lor said there was a ruckus in your room last night,” Leia says with a raised brow.

“I was...visited last night. Look, pardon my language, but there is strange shit going on here. Apparently has been for decades. And the disappearances are connected to it.”

Leia frowns.

Hux takes a long swallow of his over-steeped Earl Grey before continuing.

“I’ve seen Ben.”

Her hands fly to her mouth.

“Whatever happened,” Hux tells her gently, “it was bad. He was tortured and sacrificed. But I might be able to at least help his spirit.”

Her eyes shine wetly. Once again, her focus slips past Hux. After a moment, she starts from her chair.

Hux looks behind himself. He thinks he can just see a shadow.

“Ben?” he asks quietly.

“Yes,” she replies. “He looks like he’s watching you. Like he doesn’t see me. I don’t think he ever does see me.”

Hux stands and takes a step or two closer to the shadow flickering in and out of his awareness.

“I swore I’d help you, Ben, and I will. I’m coming soon.”

He thinks he feels a light press of lips to his own, just for a second.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warnings: A creepy little girl ghost attempts to molest Hux in this chapter. Nothing graphic happens and her attempt fails, but there is non-consenting sexual touching.


	5. I Only Know One Place Where I Have to Be

Hux stands there a moment more, in surprise. Not shock, honestly, because this ghost business has been encroaching upon his life for the past week and then some, only increasing in its intensity for the last couple of nights. No, his surprise emerges solely from the fact that it seems that Ben--the ghost of Solo past--has kissed him.

Even more surprising is the fact that he stands now, shoulders slumped and head hanging and bloody confounding tears in his eyes, with Leia observing. He takes a shaking breath and turns, but only after covertly wiping his eyes.

“Armitage?” she asks quietly.

He shakes his head. “I...felt him. Just now,” he replies, just as quietly. His fingers have wandered to his lips unconsciously.

She says nothing in return, simply observes him still, as he seems to attempt to process Ben’s touch.

And that is what surprises him most: Ben’s gentle kiss.

Of course, it could be Ben’s desperation driving him to kiss out of gratitude. Perhaps, some people do that. Hux wouldn’t know. It seems a silly gesture. But this, this kiss has affected him greatly. Not like other kisses, simple affairs or sloppy makeouts with short-term, failed significant others.

No, this kiss felt like the taste of something he never knew he missed; but once, experienced, it is something he knows he wants. He needs.

He’s meant to have it. As if all the strange events have conspired to bring Armitage Hux here, right now, for Ben Solo. He feels terrible, selfish, that Phasma is relegated to a catalyst for their meeting. She’s so much more, she is everything, his dearest friend.

He’s going to give it all up for Ben Solo. 

He knows how this all goes. He hopes it’s enough to save Phasma and give Leia some peace of mind.

He hopes he wins.

He doesn’t dare ponder that Ben should be his, and he Ben’s, though this all feels as if it’s played out before, so long ago. He hopes he won that time. All the other times, even though he feels silly even considering such nonsense. He doesn’t believe in god, but he’s never even considered reincarnation.

Which is neither here nor there.

His purpose is to free Phasma and save Ben.

“This is the last day,” he tells Leia. “If I don’t do it tonight, I’ve failed.”

“What? What’s going on, Armitage?”   
  
“Maybe--please, just leave me the room for today. Tonight, I think it will all be over. Just, stay here and watch for my friend, could you? She’ll need help.”   
  
Leia stands.

“I’ve got to go now. I hope I’ll see you again. If not, know I tried,” he says, and heads back to his room, leaving Leia confused, worried. Frightened.

  
  


**

  
  


In his room, he reclines against his pillows. He’s attempted to pack, to leave a note for Phasma, with his keys and wallet; one for Leia. Now, he tries to sleep once more.

It’s shockingly easy. He is exhausted both from a bad night’s sleep last night, but also the strange heaviness from the past week that has followed him to waking hours.

He slows his breath, fastens his Sleep Master over his eyes, and lets go.

In moments, he is back.

This time, they await him.

The little priestesses in a line, staring silently at him. The one with braids leers up at him from where she stands, runs her tongue over her teeth; he sneers at her. The two nearest him try to take his hands, to lead him through the building, the orphanage, he thinks. He pulls away and photographs them.

They scream and disappear, and quite suddenly, the other priestesses are on him, again, clawing and biting. With a yell, he shoots and shoots, hitting them intermittently. 

And all at once, a great wail erupts from nowhere, and Hux is freed. The priestesses flee and cower against the walls.

Kylo Ren approaches, beastlike, from the shadows. Ghastly energy ripples from his body, and his tattoos seem to glow. He reaches a hand for Hux’s throat and squeezes.

“Ben, it’s me. It’s Hux. Let me go.”

“He will not,” the braided priestess says smugly. “Our master wishes to see you.’

“And I wish to see him. You thought I’d be a better sacrifice, did you not? Well, I offer myself instead of my friend.”

Kylo Ren loosens his grip, and Hux coughs a bit in his face.

“Release Phasma. I’ll go willingly.”

“That’s not how it works, pretty one. Master takes whom he wants,” she says archly.

Kylo Ren lashes out at her, and she hits the wall. With a hiss, she hides behind another priestess and remains silent.

Ren releases him and beckons him to follow.

They go through the orphanage, the old asylum, and it seems somehow changed. Darker, filthier, as if evil finally decided to ooze forth to show its true face. Ren’s form lurches ahead of him, rope-burned and muscled; Hux wishes to touch him, but he’s uncertain. They come to the torture chamber, and Hux flinches at the sight of the altar. Almost without a thought, now he does reach out to touch Ren, clasping his wrist.

Ren whimpers, and yet he doesn’t pull away.

For a moment, an image flickers upon the rack, and Hux clutches tightly at Ren’s arm.

Somehow, it is Ben, from the past, looking at Hux beseechingly.

“I’m here for you,” Hux tells him.

Ben stands, touches the burn at his own throat, and approaches Hux. He leans down to touch his lips to Hux’s again, but Kylo Ren growls and steps into the space Ben is occupying.

Somehow, he’s taller than Ben; Ben, only an inch or two taller than Hux. But Kylo Ren has been stretched upon the rack, and now stands inches above Hux, his arms and legs stretched too long, the muscles elongated. It should be grotesque, but it isn’t, not to Hux, because he’s seen the truth.

“Ren,” Hux says and stands on his toes. Pulling Ren’s enormous blindfolded head down, he kisses him. 

Ren makes a strange sound.

The priestesses, who have followed close behind, screech and wail and fly around the two men, pulling at their arms and hair.

They shove Hux and Ren apart and drag Hux to the door through which he found Phasma.

She’s not in the cage anymore.

Her wrists are bound, and two old men in robes are at her side.

“Hux!”   
  


“Phasma!”

He tries to embrace her, but the priests block him.

“Where is your master?” he demands of them. They stare blankly at him and then smile in unison. They open their mouths and moan at him and laugh, pink and empty.

Empty mouths, because their teeth and tongues have been removed. Hux gags.

“They’ve been great for chats,” Phasma snarks with a grimace. “But I’ll take them over that little shit with the braid crown.”

“Oh god, she’s awful,” Hux replies. “And handsy too,” he adds, shuddering.

“Where is she? I’ll kick her ass!” Phasma snarls.

This respite, this brief normalcy pains Hux. He’s about to lose this, he knows. WIth a chagrined sigh, he raises his camera and starts shooting the priests. Before they can even approach him, they scream and disappear.

The priestesses shriek again, but Hux begins shooting as many of the little girls as possible. They pull at him and Phasma, but he thins out their number enough that they fall back. 

He leans against the cage, already tired.

“What the hell?” Phasma asks. 

Hux shrugs. “Some sort of spirit camera. They don’t like it.”

  
She peeks out the door to find the three remaining little girls huddling behind Ren.

“Oh fuck!” she yells, falling back beside Hux. “It’s him, it’s him--”

“Don’t worry about him, Phasma. I can take care of him. I know who he is. But right now,” he tells her as he reaches for her hands to unbind them, “you need to leave, if you can.”   
  
“How?”

“Go out the door of the altar room and down the hallway. Just keep going straight, as long as you can. And--”

He takes a breath and removes the camera from around his neck. He hands it to her.

“If anyone comes for you, use it.”

“But what weapon will you have?”

“I guess I’ll just have to trust Kylo Ren.”

“No--wait--”

“Phas--” he says and puts a finger to her mouth. “If you are alive, wake up. If you aren’t, come back for me.”

And then he hugs her.

She watches as he pulls away from her, and they both have tears in their eyes.

“You’re the best friend I’ve ever had, woman,” he tells her.

“You too, old man,” she replies.

He smiles and goes back out to Kylo Ren.

She gathers her courage and follows him, shocked when she sees him take the hand of the creature who caught her.

“It’s all right,” he assures her.

The priestesses, three now, scream in mortification.

“No! Master will be angry!”

“Do not go, you will not be free!”

And the one with the braids seethes with anger as she gropes Hux’s arm with uncanny enough strength, he knows she’ll leave marks.

“Don’t think master will be merciful and allow her to escape, pretty one. He will destroy you and her both, and have enough strength to feed off everyone. But I will have you first, delicious morsel!”

As she opens her mouth filled with teeth, Kylo Ren finally moves. 

He grabs her by the throat now, and chokes her as she spits and struggles.

“He. Is. Mine,” Ren says.

Even though they are in a dream world, the cruel snap of her neck and the angle at which her body lands when Ren throws her is far too real. Hux wonders if she is forever dead, or if she will revive later. Days, months from now, will she torment other poor souls trapped here?

As he will be.

Phasma watches with a horrified face.

“Go! Now!” Hux commands. “I love you!”

“I love you too, old man,” she replies. 

And then she is off running. Hux can hear the ghastly screams as Phasma shoots her way down the hall with his camera.

“That was your only weapon,” Ren says. His voice is hoarser than Ben’s.

Hux reaches up to touch Ren’s throat. “Maybe so,” he answers with a shrug.

  
  


**

  
  


What Hux doesn’t get to see:

Phasma, in filthy clothes, body weak and not as strapping as last week, crawling from a mausoleum. Crying and stumbling toward the inn. Lor and Leia rushing toward her, and Leia already on her cell.

Phasma will find his note and return home to New York City to take his cat and get therapy. She will hate sleeping, especially alone. But when she does sleep, she sometimes tries to find him.

But he does know he did all he could. And if he doesn’t see her in this realm of sleep, she’s escaped. That’s his hope.

Now, Kylo Ren leads him down and down into the darkened pit he recalls from earlier in the week, what seems so long ago now, the same pit into which he watched Phasma descend. When they reach the bottom, some of the priestesses are there, though not the awful one. Myriad priests and what look like nuns are lined up before a large door. They frown at Ren as he leads Hux through their number. 

“He gives those closest to him strength. Had you used the camera on these,” Ren says, with a gesture toward the nuns and priests, “you’d see they are vanquished quickly. Whereas the children and I, who do his bidding directly, take much more to disperse. But a camera will not work on the Master.”

Hux shrugs. “Who says?”

Ren shoves a priest aside. He holds something out to Hux. It’s an old digital camera, a small one. He hasn’t used one like it in years.

“This was Ben’s. It isn’t much.”

“Thank you, Kylo Ren. I”m going to save you now, whichever one you end up being,” Hux murmurs to him.

Ren’s breath catches.

“He never had anyone say that to him, you know. Not without meaning they wanted him to be who they wanted. Not who he was.”

Hux studies him. “I know what it’s like to be lonely. To be something besides what other people wished. I don’t know who you are or were or will be. But for some reason, I want to know you.”

Ren remains silent, his eyes unmoving under their binding.

“Come here.” Hux beckons him, and Ren leans down. It is awkward, but their faces are a breath apart, Hux looking up at Ren. “I think I was meant for you. The moment you kissed me today, I knew it.” And he kisses Ren once more.

The nuns and priests gasp toothlessly. The priestesses rage. They pull open the great stone door--etched with similar markings to the ones one Ren’s skin, trimmed in blood--and shove Hux and Ren though.

Before them is a great throne with an ancient creature upon it. It is cloaked in deepest black, as if clothed in nothingness. Its darkness eats away at the chamber, devours the light. Its jaundiced eyes regard the two men with amusement. Its long, arthritic fingers curl harshly around the armrests of its great stone seat, also with markings matching Ren’s.

It opens its mouth, and a high rasp erupts from it: laughter. Hux cringes. The already heavy, dank air is now tinged with a sour reek.

“So stubborn, little man. You will indeed be a lovely addition to my trophies and minions. A pity you grew so attached to my sacrifice here.”

Its voice is high and old and has a queer quality to it, as if its teeth are too big for its mouth. It raises one hand to beckon Hux forward. Hux goes, palming Ben’s little camera all the while.

“My little bird was right. You are fair. Perhaps, I should take you for my plaything. Normally, I prefer lovely young women, but you are pretty like a woman. And it has been so long since I’ve had such delights. What say you, Ren, my boy?”

Hux has shivers going up his spine. His stomach roils at the things this old cretin says. He looks to Ren. Ren is stiff, but his fists are clenched.

“Oh,” says the creature, “you want him for yourself? What makes you think you’ve the right?

“One of your girls already tried,” Hux interjects.

The creature stares at him. It frowns. It looks angry. Never has Hux felt more like a plaything, like an object; not since his miserable childhood has his agency been this negated.

He steps closer, to regain some of it.

“What even are you, old monster? As if I’d be yours,” Hux sneers.

It leaps from its throne and floats down the few steps to Hux. It takes hold of his chin and brings him closer, too close, to its musty, seeping mouth. Its teeth are yellowed and sharp, inside the home of its thin, stretched lips. It leers down at Hux, its feet inches off the ground.

“You will learn to listen, boy. To appreciate my good attention. If you receive my wrath, you will wish you had let me have you.”

“I want that malodorous mouth nowhere near me!” Hux yells.

Quickly, he raises the little camera in his hand and punches off two pictures, before the creature yelps and smacks it away.

“Fool! Insolent wretch!” it screams, spit landing with a crackle on Hux’s face. It almost hurts, but not nearly so much as being flung into the door. Were he awake, he knows he’d have broken ribs. 

“You are mine now,” it says, coming closer. “I will mark you myself.”

Behind it, Hux sees Kylo Ren reach for the camera. He takes a picture of himself and reels.

“Fool!” Ren’s master says, turning. “What are you doing?”

Ren doesn’t respond, simply takes another picture. And another. Picture after picture. Hux and the creature watch in confusion.

Yet with each picture, Ren’s tattoos fade. His body reforms itself slightly. 

“Stop!” his master orders, flinging out a withered hand. Its robe rides up its arm, thin with tendons and brands similar to Ren’s tattoos, the door, the throne.

And yet, Ren continues, ignoring his master, stumbling away before the old fuck can take the camera. Its gnarled fingers curl inward, and the camera slips from Ren’s grasp.

Still, now he is more Ben than Ren. He looks dazed to Hux, almost drunk, the way he staggers toward the throne, further from Hux and the creature.

“Kylo Ren, what are you doing?” it asks. 

“I,” he slurs, “am claiming this throne, you shit-eating, ghoulish old fuck.”

The creature shoves Hux to the ground, its twisted face screwing itself into an angry mask of rage.

“Stop this stupidity, Kylo Ren. Your power is leaking away because of your idiocy.”

Hux, clutching his dream ribs which he really hopes aren’t broken in the waking world, crawls after the creature. Ben’s old camera is right in front of him, if he can just reach it--

And do what? It really doesn’t work on the old one.

But it does work on Ren. Though he isn’t certain how that’s very helpful at all.

Ben sits on the throne spitefully. 

He takes up more of it than his master did. His legs are spread, his visage haughty, and he looks every inch a prince. As if he were born to privilege.

“You are finished,” Ben says, for, truly, he is Ben now, his skin brighter, his eyes opened and free of the blindfold. His sarong is more pristine, barely clinging to his hips. His tattoos are more vibrant, as if they’ve just been inked. He is, actually, stunning, and Hux can’t take his eyes off him.

The old creature laughs. The crass sound bounces from wall to wall; it is deafening, and it is disgusting, like some fetid corpse bursting open to spill out its rotted viscera and grue. Hux hides his head in his hands, presses his face to the floor, but Ben remains still and regal. 

“Hux,” he says, “lift your face.”

Hux obeys.

The camera is within his grasp.

So he takes it, and fumbles himself off the ground to his feet. Manages to take a step toward the throne. As he passes the monster, it grabs his wrist. Hux yelps as he is yanked into its embrace and forced once again to face its hideousness. Its tongue slithers from its mouth to seek Hux’s own. He yells.

In a flash, Ben bolts from the throne and, like the tide, surges down upon them. He pulls at the creature’s arm, but it is strong. He grabs the camera instead and takes photo after photo, but this only infuriates his master further.

So he takes another picture of himself.

And.

And once again, he is Ben, more fully Ben than he has been in years. From the folds of his sarong, he reveals a knife. It is silver, hilt and blade, with a cracked ruby on the pommel. He raises it and plunges it into his master’s stomach. 

It screams and flails out, its fist catching Ben in the face. He falls onto his back. Its saliva sprays Hux again, and he really wants to vomit.

“Fool, this will not kill me. You are dead!”

Ben looks uncertain now.

But Hux ponders a moment. If he isn’t dead, yet, maybe he has more power here?

He yanks the knife from the creature’s stomach. It snarls, but, realizing Hux has the knife, begins to roar. He tries to fling Hux away, but not before Hux stabs him under and up and right into its stone cold malevolent heart.

Its roar is cut short as it stares in disbelief at Hux.

“He’s dead, but I’m not yet, am I?” Hux asks.

Ben stands and goes to Hux. Hux takes his proffered hand and rises to lean heavily on Ben. To stand beside him. He takes the camera from Ben’s hand.

The creature is gibbering, trying in vain to remove the silver dagger, but it is embedded to the hilt, and it is bleeding its black tar blood out far too quickly.

“Take a picture, it’ll last longer,” Ben says with a smirk.

“I can’t believe you just said that,” Hux replies, rolling his eyes.

But he does just that. The monster screams.

Hux hands the camera to Ben and approaches the creature. He pulls off his blazer and wraps part of it around the hilt of the dagger. It is quickly sodden with black blood, but he manages to yank it free.

Then he stabs the dying master of the realm again.

And Ben takes a picture.

Again and again until Hux is covered in blood, and the creature is dissolving into a very dead, oozing black stain on the floor.

There is silence in the throne room, but a moment. And then from beyond the door, Hux hears cadaverous screams, agonized and confused.

To have relied on that creature for existence would be a terrible fate. Hux almost feels sorry for them; it almost feels too familiar. But this time, he broke free.

He falls to his knees.

His body aches, and the blood stings.

Ben comes to him, hauls him up carefully.

“We need to wash this off. I don’t think it’s good for you.”

“I’d say not. It...it hurts.”

Ben hoists Hux up into his arms like a princess, as if he weighed nothing.

Hux likes this, very much indeed.

“There are two options,” Ben says, walking to the door. It opens as he reaches it. Two priests are on either side and bow deeply to him. Half of their number and some of the nuns are gone. Several priestesses are, including the little shit. Ben acknowledges them all before continuing his words to Hux.

One little priestess bows low.

“We are who remain, sire. You are now our master, by rule of blood. We who stay chose to, rather than follow the old one into oblivion. There were a few who...had no choice.”

“Very well. Um--” Ben looks to Hux.

“Clean up?” Hux suggests.

“Yes! Clean up. This place is a mess.”

“Yes, sire.”

“And you should know, he held the knife,” Ben says with a nod to Hux.

“Oh! Forgive me, sire!” And then she bows to Hux.

His head reels.

Ben continues toward the stairs, out of the pit. He rises and leaves his people behind him.

“Royalty now, I see,” Hux says.

Ren hums an acknowledgment. 

“What were you saying?”

“I said you have two options, Hux. Armitage,” Ben says his name shyly.

“What are they?”

“Well, we won. So, I think, maybe, you could just wake up. Go on with life. We probably won’t see each other again.”

Ben’s face falls as he says this.

Hux’s heart hurts. He really does feel as if something like this has happened before. And he’s afraid he might have lost Ben that time. If he were to give any credence to past life nonsense.

He does trust the pain in his heart that tells him not to lose Ben. For the first time or the hundredth. It doesn’t matter.

“What’s option two?” Hux asks breathily.

“Once you bathe in the pool, you belong to this world. You literally die in the real world. Your friend was very close to that. You saved her right in time.”

“I’ll take option two,” Hux says bluntly.

“You don’t understand. You can never go back. Maybe sometimes you can breach the doorway between the two worlds, but you’re stuck here. Like me.”

“I completely understand. I planned for that eventuality.”

Now they have reached the mausoleum door. Ben carefully maneuvers Hux through it and through the cemetery. There are many pathways through this world, Hux realizes. And here, just before the edge of where the vineyard should be, is a small pond. It is surrounded by cattails and reeds, its algaed surface calm. Ben sets Hux gently on his feet.

“I’m not losing you,” Hux tells him.

He leans in and meets Ben’s lips.

  
  


**

  
  


Weeks after Phasma returns home, she has a dream. In it, she sits in a greenhouse filled with many lovely plants. Hux is at a white patio table with her, and they are having tea and laughing. He wears a silver ring on his left finger, intricately carved with strange symbols and set with a piece of ruby. He seems so happy, she wakes up crying, but strangely content.

And, perhaps, one wouldn’t be surprised to learn that sometimes Leia catches a glimpse of her son and that redheaded journalist out strolling the vineyards, hand in hand.

FIN


End file.
